Is Keynes New to Canada ?

Margaret Wente’s column today on “A Liberal Landslide? Not So Fast,” defends the performance of the Harper Conservative government from Krugman’s implicit criticism in his “Keynes Comes to Canada” column.

She notes correctly that “Mr. Krugman handily ignored the fact that Stephen Harper ran six years of deficits in response to the crisis of 2008 – a classic Keynesian response if there ever was one.”

Then Finance Minister Joe Flaherty did implement a classic Keynesian policy of having the government be the “spender of last resort” despite Flaherty’s general emphasis on balancing the budget.